“I don’t think the winter hunt impacted the spring harvest at all,” Seamster said. “You’re only talking about an average of 20 birds per county, and an average of only about 10 hens per county.”

Seamster still rates the Caswell Game Lands as probably the best public hunting area in North Carolina for wild turkeys, but he’s excited about the prospects of several other areas around the state.

A very interesting prospective area is the 6,000-acre Thurmond Chatham Game Lands along the border between Wilkes County and Alleghany County — two tremendous areas for turkeys. Thurmond Chatham has long been a popular area for deer hunters. It is divided into four sections — A, B, C and D — but problems with a landowner taking away access from Longbottom Road to the very popular D section cut down on deer-hunting pressure. The only way to access Section D, without coming in from the Longbottom area, was to park on top of the mountain, near the Blue Ridge Parkway, and hike down and into Section D. Of course, that made for a terrible ordeal to drag a deer back up the mountain, and hunting pressure in that section of the game lands plummeted.

There should be no such problem for turkey hunters, Seamster said, because while a 20-pound gobbler may seem heavy, it’s relatively easy to tuck one in the pouch on the back of your turkey-hunting vest and climb back up the mountain — easy compared to dragging a 150-pound deer.

“Wilkes County — that whole county has birds — and Thurmond Chatham is a good place to turkey hunt. During deer season, all the gates are open, so hunters can drive in and park, then walk. During turkey season, the gates will be closed, so it’s walk-in only. But turkey hunters don’t have any problem with that, and they shouldn’t have any problem walking up out of Section D with a turkey.”

In the western Piedmont, Seamster likes the South Mountains, Green River and Dysartsville Game Lands; in the mountains, he said, the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests are full of turkeys and not heavily hunted; and in the Coastal Plain, he likes the Roanoke River National Wildlife Refuge and Game Lands and the Croatan National Forest. In the Piedmont, he has the Uwharrie National Forest second to the Caswell Game Lands. He wishes there were more public-hunting areas in the northwestern corner of the state and along the Coastal Plain, especially in southeastern North Carolina.

“There are plenty of birds, and there is plenty of land in the Nantahala and Pisgah,” Seamster said. “The game lands out there in the western Piedmont should be good. South Mountain should be good; we’ve been doing a lot of work down there, and the turkey population is doing real well. And the Green River (game lands) over in Polk County should be an area that’s real good.

“The Uwharrie area has been very strong over the past few years; the turkey population is coming along down there. The Roanoke River tracts are for draw hunts only, but they are hard to beat. There are a whole lot of turkeys along the entire Roanoke River. There are a number of birds being killed on the Croatan National Forest every year. We stocked several sites down there, and birds are doing well. A lot of the national forest is not turkey habitat — pocossins and the like — but if you can find some hardwoods areas, you can have some good turkey hunting.

“Birds are coming along pretty well in areas like Columbus and Robeson counties. They’re doing extremely well, but we don’t have a lot of game lands down there. And most of northwest North Carolina is private land, too.”

In the southeastern corner of the state, Bladen County had the best harvest with 155 birds. Hunters in Columbus County took 89, Brunswick 51 and Robeson 50. A little farther north in the traditional farm belt, counties such as Jones (102), Duplin (85), Sampson (66) and Harnett (58) had good harvests.

Harvest figures from 2004 bear out Seamster’s idea that the Roanoke River bottom counties are excellent places to look for a big gobbler. Turkeys were stocked there in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and flocks have eventually migrated outward from the river bottom to occupy significant parts of Halifax, Northampton and Bertie counties, for example. Last season, Halifax was ranked No. 10 in the state with 209 birds taken; Northampton was 13th with 192 and Bertie barely missed cracking the top 15 with 169.

Anson County has for years been the top county in the southern Piedmont, where turkey flocks took a little longer to get established. Hunters took 175 birds there last season. Montgomery County boasted a kill of 116 birds, and other southern Piedmont counties had good numbers: Stanly, 49 and Richmond, 80.